


Silence in the Spaces Between

by thewolfmoon



Category: The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Angst, Depression, all the usual stuff, be warned there's no actual plot to this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:27:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27074953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewolfmoon/pseuds/thewolfmoon
Summary: Vegas vignettes. Small, mundane moments leading up to the end.
Relationships: Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Comments: 8
Kudos: 46





	Silence in the Spaces Between

Theo slips into Vegas life unknowingly. He doesn’t feel it; the slow release of his sharp-witted city mannerisms for the soft, hazed, droll of desert living. It just happens. One day he wakes up, bleary eyed and heavy with sleep, and finds that his body knows this place as well as if it were home. Then again,  _ it is home _ , he guesses. He can find his way through his room and down the hall without lights, without even opening his eyes. His feet know all the turns now.

Some small voice inside him insists that this is betrayal, that it shouldn’t be this easy to let go of thirteen years spent living somewhere else. The numbers just don’t add up, don’t equal out. How is it that he’s already forgotten the soundtrack of the city, the steady rush of car horns and breaks being flattened to the floor— how has he already grown so used to the dark? The window is pitch black at night, like a great big abyss is pushing against the other side. There’s no more glow of street lamps, of headlights stripping by. It’s easier to just believe it’s always been like this. 

During the first few months, he couldn’t help but draw connections between everything here and all he’d left behind in New York. Most things had some sort of altered counterpart, an inferior parallel to what used to be. Instead of the subway, there was the CAT bus. Instead of his mother, there was his dad. 

Instead of his apartment, brimming with furniture, books, and mismatched shoes, there was now the sprawling expanse of this house. Empty rooms and bare walls. All the air conditioners always turned on high. 

The only thing Theo still can’t pair is Boris. There’s no one like Boris back in Manhattan. Not even Tom, with his cigarettes and blood pacts and volatile words, can come close to whatever Boris is, to whatever odd space is somehow filled by his presence alone. 

And the painting, the painting shifts in and out of his favor with time. Before the explosion, he’d never owned something so invaluable, something so threateningly fragile. Sometimes it’s like an entire world to him, a tiny universe pinned between his headboard and wall. Other times it’s like a weight, a shadow pressing incessantly at the back of his skull. Either way, it’s the one thing he can’t get used to, the one memory that’s been fossilized, made tangible and unignorable in its impossibly small form. 

He wonders if it’s all this that keeps him awake on nights like these, something uneasy stirring in the pit of him. He can’t help but feel like he’s balancing on the edge of a chasm, this new ground beneath him no more steady than the one that was ripped out from under him after the explosion. 

The world, it seems, has become a lot like the damp and malleable sand that lines the mouth of a shore. He remembers early trips to the beach with his mother, the tide pulling away to expose a ground his feet would sink right into. He used to wonder if it were possible to be swallowed up whole by it, his entire body vanishing straight into the earth. 

That’s what this is like, he thinks. There is nothing to hold him here. 

* * *

  
  


The days are easier than the nights. 

Theo likes that everything isn’t as quiet or isolated when the sun is out. There’s something comforting in the slight bustle; the rush to get dressed in the morning, the tumultuous ride on the school bus. In the halls, crowds of kids brush and bump against his shoulders, remind him of where he is. 

Boris in class, Theo learns, is all bouncing knees and spastic hands, fingers digging restlessly into the grooves of his desk, boots leaving scuff marks on the tiled floors. Today Theo can feel his eyes on him during all 40 minutes of the lecture and it makes his stomach swoop in a way he’s started to grow used to. 

“Enjoy the view?” He asks, while they’re on their way to lunch. 

“Hm?”

“You were staring at me all class. You didn’t even try to be slick about it.”

Boris eyes him from the side, something playful in the tilt of his head. “Yes, and?”

Theo scoffs. “You’re a dumbass.” 

Boris grins and pushes ahead of him. 

The lunch on Tuesdays is some sort of Sloppy Joe conglomeration that looks vaguely like vomit. Theo pushes it around on his tray while Boris sets in on his like someone might be coming in at any second to take it away. They’re seated in their usual spot, a small round table pressed against one of the cafeteria’s oversize windows. Theo looks out onto the sand-dusted courtyard and muses over the fact that he could probably write a multi-paged list of all the little things he’s picked up on during his first few months here, all the little things that have somehow become a part of his New Normal. 

What he knows about Boris could fill up an entire book on its own, he’s sure. 

There’s the way he eats, for example (fervent and rushed like they’re in a contest to see who can have the cleanest plate). Or the way he talks (with his hands, with his body, never just his voice.) Or even the way he moves (clumsy, but confident. His ever long limbs like the branches of a tree). 

They’ve grown into each other, as friends do. Theo knows when to laugh at his jokes, and when to slap him over the head. Knows when they should fill up the space between them with meaningless chatter, and when to let silence do its job. 

He brings his carton of milk up to his lips and lets his eyes flicker over Boris’s arms and wrists, the underside of his jaw. This is another part of his New Normal: checking for bruises that he knows don’t belong. 

Boris notices him looking and raises an eyebrow, his foot beneath the table catching against Theo’s own. 

“Something to say?” He asks.

Theo shakes his head and stabs his fork into the food, eagerly trying to ignore the blush he knows is creeping up the back of his neck. He tells himself it’s because he got caught and now looks like an idiot, but deep down he knows that something else is at work. Something small and tenuous and lethal as a blade. 

He keeps his eyes downcast for the rest of lunch. Neither of them move their feet.

* * *

  
  


On the anniversary of his mother’s death, Theo does not get out of bed. 

He’d almost forgotten. Had almost let his lingering hangover wash the grime of memory out from his head. When he’d woken up there’d only been one thing on his mind: water. Not the white-hot heat of the explosion, nor the unspoken threat of social workers at his door. Not his mother scaling the steps of the museum, umbrella in hand; not his mother, buried and demolished beneath endless layers of debris. Just, water.

When he does remember it’s like a swift cut to the gut. He falls back against his mattress and piles his pillow over his face. On the tip of his tongue are all the things he hasn’t said. All the things he’ll never say. He settles on a quasi-prayer. Not to God, or an angel, or anything like that, but to his mother. His mother who is somewhere, maybe. Lost within the twines of another world. One he didn’t get her killed in. 

It’s not always like this. It’s not always this bad. He has to remind himself of that often. There are good days. Days when the sun isn’t too hot against his skin and the boundless expanse of desert around him is more like a promise of freedom than it is a reminder of his upturned life. There are days when his chest is full of laughter. There are days when he is happy.

But today, today isn’t like that. Today he wants to die. 

He skips school. The day weans and he spends his hours turning in bed, restless, unmoored. Behind his eyelids is an endless film reel. He sees his mother roaming the highline with him, sunlight caught in her hair, smile lines up and down her cheeks. He sees her in the kitchen of their apartment, heating up leftovers, the smell of stir fry wafting through every room.  _ We should order from these people more often, huh? _

The guilt is infinite. Immeasurable. He allows himself to be pulled by the same tug of dread that has twisted inside him like a damaged nerve for the past year now. It drags him through fragmented sleep, thin, papery dreams that slip between the folds of his mind like strips of silk. He never wants to wake up. He never wants to see anything ever again. He thinks that maybe, if he stays like this— eyes shut, body curled, fists clenched— he’ll eventually disappear. He can will himself away if he just tries hard enough. If he just doesn’t move, doesn’t think, doesn’t breathe. 

It’s a shuffle of feet by the door that hauls him, like a body from a lake, from the mire of his thoughts. There’s the shadow of someone moving, someone standing, just on the other side. 

Theo pulls himself up, flattens his back against the headboard as quietly as he can. His heart is beating jackrabbit-fast in his chest. He’s scared and he doesn’t know why. Or, he’s scared and he does know why. He just doesn’t want to think about it. That’s his dad there, about to come in. He knows. So close, hand on the knob probably. That’s his dad and he’s going to come in and he’s going to make Theo speak. He’s going to stand there and ask a stupid question, something that shouldn’t be said out loud, and Theo’s not going to be able to stop he’s going to talk and talk and talk so much that the words run him dry and and then there will be nothing left to say at all. 

His brain recycles a childish litany of  _ nonono _ and _ don’tdon’tdon’t _ as he stares, hard, at the shadows still shifting by his door. He feels feverish and crazed, frantic for no good reason. A pang of hunger flares, indignant, inside him. He hasn’t eaten all day. But as long as the door stays closed, he thinks, it’ll be all right. He just can’t hear it, just doesn’t want to hear it. His dad and his mom’s name in his dad’s mouth where it’ll be twisted and stained and made into something it’s not, something it never was. He doesn’t like it when his dad talks about her. It’s over, it’s over and he just wishes she could be left alone.  _ Please just leave her alone. _

Much to his surprise, the door remains closed. The shadows, for all their shifting and fluttering about, disappear. Whoever was there has left. That’s it. That’s that. 

Theo sinks back into bed feeling oddly unanchored, loose and free to drift someplace far far away from here. The light of the setting sun spreads, blood orange, across his sheets. His dad, or Xandra, or whoever, didn’t come in. They stood there and they thought about it and it wasn’t enough to make them come in.

A small part of him knows that this should probably make him feel worse, but for now there’s only relief. Frenetic, giddy, and short-lasting relief. He isn’t ready to talk. 

He doesn’t ever want to talk. 

* * *

  
  


“What do you think?”

Boris holds up the poorly rolled joint, a twist of paper and leaves that looks like it’s about to fall to pieces at any moment. He’s still in the learning process. They both are. 

Theo snatches the thing from him so that he can redo it himself. It’s a Friday afternoon, which means they’re sprawled out on the floor of Theo’s room, halo of candy wrappers around them and Popchyk trotting lazy circles by their heads. Theo dumps the weed out onto the back of one of his beaten chemistry textbooks, realigns it so that it’ll be neater for packing. These are definitely his favorite type of days: the easy peace of an empty house and an entire weekend stretched out ahead of them. He wishes he could prolong it, live inside it even. It wouldn’t be so bad, being stuck in a small piece of time like that. He doesn’t need more than what there is in this moment, steady thrum of _The Killers_ emanating from his iPod, the edge of Boris’s hip slotted comfortably against his own. Safe.

They smoke the joint and migrate to Theo’s bed, Boris already starting up a steady stream of conversation about nothing. Nothing as in everything. All the inane shit that crosses his mind.  _ Think there was something metal in my lunch today.  _ Scratching his head like some idiot in a cartoon,  _ that foil thing they use, maybe? Smart I didn’t swallow it. _ Theo only half listens, most of his attention caught up in the wave of numbness sluggishly pulsing its way through his limbs. The steady woosh of air from the AC feels so nice on his skin, cool and light. 

“Potter,” Boris says suddenly, rolling over to face Theo, nose very nearly smashing into his glasses, “Potter, Potter, Potter.”

Theo groans, trying and failing to shove him away. Boris has never had any conception of personal space. “Jesus Christ. What is it?”

Boris smiles at him, stoned eyes pink and heavy lidded. “Tell me something.” 

_ Tell me something. _ It’s become a thing between the two of them.  _ Tell me a story. Tell me something I don’t know. Tell me tell me tell me.  _ It’s mostly been a way to keep the conversation alive, chase away the silence Boris so passionately hates. 

“I, uh,” Theo blinks up at the ceiling. His thoughts feel thready, fine, impossible to catch. “I dreamt about my mom last night.” 

Boris doesn’t miss a beat. “Oh yeah?” His fingers find their way to the hem of Theo’s shirt. He toys with it absently. “Good or bad?”

“Good,” Theo swallows, trying to even out his voice. He didn’t really mean to start this conversation, but there’s not much stopping it now that it’s already begun. “It was good. We were at this ice skating rink, the Rockefeller Center one. You would love it, it’s huge, but anyway— we were there and it was really nice because it wasn’t as crowded as it normally is. There were barely any people there at all actually, just me and her I think. It was so— so  _ beautiful _ . Like the movies. Night black sky, and lights, and the huge tree right there, in the center. There’s this statue also, a golden Prometheus, carrying fire in his hand. My mom, she was telling me about the myth. We were skating and I had my arm linked in hers and she was teaching me the story the same way she taught me pretty much everything else. She had this really great way of explaining things. I always understood what she meant. I always got it on the first go.”

Boris hums and nods his head. His fingers have traveled from the hem of Theo’s shirt to its collar, where they now rest. Theo lets it be. No point in pushing him away when he’ll just come right back. 

“It’s kinda weird though,” he continues, looking away, “ ‘cause, in real life she wasn’t the one to teach me about it. I think some teacher did, on a field trip. And we never actually went to that rink together, her and I. But it felt so real, I thought it was a memory for a bit.” He chews his lip. He’s thirsty and tired and high as all hell. “Do you ever think about her? Your uh, your mom, I mean.”

Popchyk chooses that moment to leap onto the bed with them, blur of white fluff zigzagging across their legs before burrowing, happily, beneath Boris’s arm. Boris scratches behind his ear.

“A little bit.” He smiles, “But maybe not enough. Is silly, but, sometimes I like to wonder what she would say, to see me now, after so many years. Am not such a tiny thing anymore. We could have the same nose, you know? Or hair.”

Theo sits up. “That’s not silly.” 

Boris shrugs. “I don’t know. Hardly even a mother, she was. I was so small when it happened. Not so much the same as—”

His voice trails off but Theo can hear the unspoken words anyway. _Not so much the same as you,_ _you and your mom._ He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. She’s still your mom.”

Boris straightens out a tuft of Popchyk’s fur, looks at Theo from the side in that way he has of doing. “Okay.”

“I mean it,” Theo says, strangely adamant. If there’s one thing he appreciates about the high, it’s this. This looseness, this willingness to say what he wants, what he needs to. “It’s cool, if you want to do that, if thinking about that helps, makes her feel close. It’s totally fine.”

“Okay,  _ ptashka, _ ” Boris says, with a smile this time. 

Theo rolls his eyes. 

* * *

  
  


They’re running. 

Sneakers heavy on the tarmac, blasts of wind pushing up and through their hair. Theo has his eyes fixed on Boris’s back. He’s ahead of him, growing farther and farther away by the second, out of reach. It’s all Theo can do to keep going, beads of sweat rolling down his spine, chest caught up in a vice-like grip. 

“Faster, Potter!” Boris shouts it without turning around. Not once has he turned around. 

They run for a minute, two minutes, before finally arriving at the rundown bus stop, isolated as always. Theo leans against a pole jutting crookedly from the sidewalk and tries in vain to catch his breath. 

“Fucking asshole,” he grits, “you didn’t warn me.” 

Boris blows a strand of hair out of his face, wipes his palms on the knees of his jeans.  Theo’s jeans . “I didn’t know he was watching. Swear.” 

Theo digs into his pockets and tears out the spoils of their shopping excursion, sneering. “Here’s your shit.” He tosses it to the ground at Boris’s feet. Two packs of cigarettes and a miniature bottle of henny. “You dropped it, smartass.” 

Boris scrambles to pick it all up, muttering a string of dubious apologies. “You know I didn’t know, he was behind us and I didn’t see. Just turned around and there he was, the bastard, honest! I am sorry, but I had to run. Knew you would be following.”

“No. It doesn’t work like that.  _ You watch my back and I’ll watch yours _ , that’s what we agreed, right? Didn’t you say you’d tell me—you said you’d  _ always _ warn me if we had to run, if you were going to go—”

“Breathe, Potter.” Boris has his hands on Theo’s shoulders, grip bruisingly tight to jar him into clarity. “I would never leave you like you are thinking, on purpose. Nonsense. It won’t happen again. It was stupid of me, to assume. But we are fine now, yes?”

Theo breaks out of his hold, bristling. The muscles in his calves are throbbing and the air’s so thick with heat he feels like he might choke on it. Of course this isn’t a big deal to Boris. He wasn’t the one who’d had a security guard at his heels, grabbing at his jacket and threatening to put him in cuffs. But Theo hardly cares about that anyway. What set him off was the sight of Boris just _ booking _ it for the exit without hesitation. The thought of being left behind, being left  _ alone _ , infuriates him. This isn’t how these trips go. 

The bus comes then, and Boris is lucky for it because Theo would’ve probably ended up decking him had they been stuck out there, sweating, any longer. They pay their fare (quarters scrounged from the depths of sofa cushions) and Theo takes a seat at the very back, past the rows of people packed too tightly to squeeze in next to. Boris throws himself into the seat next to him, gnawing anxiously at a thumbnail. He looks Theo over, brows drawn low. 

“Why so upset? I told you I’m sorry.” 

Theo watches the bus stop recede from view through the window. 

“Potter,” Boris puts a hand on his knee and squeezes, “I won’t run like that again.”

“Whatever.” Theo’s tired of the conversation already. He just wants to go home. He digs around in his pocket for the chocolate bar he stole and dumps it, unceremoniously, onto Boris’ lap. Nestle Crunch. His favorite.

Boris beams, holding it out reverently. “Look at that! Using your five-fingers discount, eh?”

“Five- _ finger, _ ” Theo corrects, jamming an elbow into Boris’s ribs. Much as he hates to admit it, he can feel the anger inside him beginning to rapidly ebb away, fade out. He has to bite down on the insides of his cheeks to keep from smiling. “Idiot.” 

“My mistake,” Boris says, catching Theo’s hand and bringing it up to his lips, “five- _ finger” _ . He presses a playful kiss to each of Theo’s fingertips to demonstrate. 

Theo yanks his hand back, skin crawling with heat. “Are you fucking stupid? We’re on the bus, dipshit.” He tries to sound annoyed, but he knows his voice has gone one octave too high for that. Boris loves doing this to him, messing with him in public like that. It’s almost like he can’t stop now that he’s started. Now that  _ they’ve  _ started. He’s on top of Theo nearly all the time now: a foot knocking against his own beneath their desks at school, a hand brushing across his hip in passing at home. Something starved and reckless has been stirred up inside him, Theo thinks, and there’s just no reversing it.  He’ll be damned if he lets it happen  on the bus though. 

Boris laughs but doesn’t move to touch him again. They spend the rest of the ride in a near silence that’s comfortable enough, soft growl of the engine underfoot, light  rush of sand whizzing past the panes of glass. At some point Boris unwraps his chocolate bar and sheepishly breaks off a piece for Theo to eat. It’s a small apology of sorts, Theo knows, though for which part of the day, he isn’t sure.

He accepts it either way. 

* * *

  
  


Sometimes Theo dreams about safe things, things he’s able to tell Boris about. These dreams are saturated with images he can put words to: his mother skating with him at the rink, Andy and him lazing around on one of the benches in Central Park. It’s easy enough to talk about the stuff that feels like a memory, the stuff that lingers warm and welcoming afterward— propels him even, throughout the day. But those dreams only come sometimes. 

Tonight he can’t speak. He dreams of bodies, mountains upon mountains of rotted and blackened bodies. He tries to turn each and every one over, but none of them have faces. Their skin and bones slough away beneath his fingers like melted clay. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knows that his mother is here, that she’s one of them, but he can’t find her because there’s nothing left to be found. Nothing but dust and dirt and smoke and the crumbling walls of a museum he didn’t even know he was in. 

He jolts into wakefulness at the touch of a hand on his cheek. Cold, but familiar. It’s gone when he opens his eyes, but there’s Boris’s shaded, unreadable, face to greet him instead. 

“S’all right,” he says, drowsily reaching over to pick up the blankets that have somehow found their way to the floor, “only a dream.”

Theo’s heart hammers in his chest anyway. It’s too dark to make out the room around him, everything is doused in shadows, gaping and formless like the landscape of his nightmares. It makes him feel like he’s falling. Like he never woke up. He fumbles, blindly, for Boris’s hand again, miserably unable to conceal his budding terror. Boris gives it to him without second thought. 

“Bad one, hm?” He says, and Theo nods his head wordlessly. His jaw aches. He must’ve been clenching it too hard. 

Boris runs a thumb over Theo’s knuckles, slow and soft. “You want the light?” 

Again, Theo nods. He doesn’t think he can talk right now. He hardly ever can when the explosion bleeds its way back into his thoughts, his body. Sometimes he thinks he’s forgotten it, the impact, the split-second shock of it all, but he’s always proved wrong. It’s embedded itself into the core of him, he thinks. It’s made it so that he’ll always carry the weight of it all, the breathlessness, the paralyzing hit, full force. 

Boris switches the lamp on with his free hand and the room floods with a low, golden, light. Theo feels the tension drain out of him almost immediately, all his limbs loosening in one long exhale. He can see now. He’s home. He’s fine. 

“ _ Vse budet khorosho, _ ” Boris says, sinking back down into bed and slipping an arm around Theo’s waist so that they’re chest to spine, nose to neck. Theo knows the position well now, knows the exact mold of Boris’s body as if it were an extension of his own.  _ These are his hands and those are his knees and that’s the steady thud of his heart _ . It helps to name the real things. Those are the things that keep him here. The things that matter. 

Either way, he’s not alone in this. Boris, he knows, has nightmares too. They’re different from his own though. While Theo has to bite down on his tongue to prevent himself from waking up the entire house, Boris is always silent. The only reason he knows about them is because he can feel Boris go rigid in bed, stock-still with an expression twisted into something of suppressed pain. Whenever this happens, Theo narrows the space between them, puts a hand on his tensed shoulder and runs it up and down the length of his arm because—whatever seems to work, right? It’s talking, in its own way, he thinks. This back and forth between them, muddled and blurred with sleep, but decipherable nonetheless. Their very own language written in the spaces they carve for each other in the dark. 

Sleep finds him as it always does when they’re together, swift and easy.

* * *

  
  


Time goes on. 

By his 15th birthday, Theo decides that he is tired of change. The universe has shifted and reordered itself around him one too many times for it to be anything other than harmful. For it to spark anything other than rage. 

It starts slowly. An ever-lingering sense of frustration that buzzes brightly beneath his skin. He’s alone so much now, and it gives him time to think. Time and space and silence. Three things he doesn’t need. Three things he always seems to get. Whatever sense of rhythm that was built during his time here breaks off into jagged-edged pieces. Without Boris his days are as directionless and untethered as they were before—a cruel push back into the dark, back into the spindly and dismal mindspace that haunted him after his mother’s death. 

He despises it. The dependency. The newfound itch that leaves him jittery and irritable, on edge. He hardly eats or sleeps in the beginning, that unshakable feeling of unease, of being wronged, working its way through his body, poisoning his insides an angry red. He hates and hates and hates. Hates Kotku for rolling into his life like an undetected storm, upending what little peace he’d fostered since the move. Hates Boris for letting it happen so willingly. For throwing it all away. Hates the two of them together for just— _ being. _

It’s more than just that though. It’s never ever just one thing. It’s his dad too, and Xandra. And living in a house that’s gradually beginning to remind him of his old home in all the worst ways. Some days he thinks they’re making him forget that there was ever anything good,  _ anyone _ good, in between all of this. He has to remind himself (over and over again) that it wasn’t always just his dad from the start, his dad and the booze and the shouting and the endless array of slammed doors. 

He doesn’t want to be used to it. He wants to hold on to the good. But he can’t when he knows that one day there will more of this than there is of her. His mother. One day there’ll be more memories of this place, this moment, these  _ years _ , than there ever were of her and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. Nothing but sit and wait. 

So he’s angry. 

His patience wears itself threadbare and the smallest things begin to burst like detonations in his brain. He snaps at Boris for nudging his shoulder playfully in class, picks a fight with Xandra over her failure to feed Popchyk. He drinks and drinks until his sides cramp and the world becomes something watery and gossamer, something insubstantial enough to drive his fist through. There’s just no ridding himself of it, the Bad Stuff. It’s got its fingers dug in too deep. 

He learns how to temper it, eventually. Learns how to swallow it all down and keep it buried in his gut like a shiny black stone that just weighs and weighs and weighs. He tolerates Kotku, takes Boris where he can get him, and rides out his dad’s mood swings like he never stopped, like there’s never been anything more normal than this.

Though, none of it does much to stop the dreams. 

He’s started dreaming about fires. Bright, hot, orange flames that lap at the sides of houses, burn clean through the floorboards. He wakes up with the taste of ash in his mouth and throat and remembers the shape of matches in his hands, the sting of heat against his brow. The funny thing is that they’re not even nightmares. They’re a respite, actually. Welcome deviations from the cold, relentless, horrors of his usual dreams. Fire, he learns, feels alive. There’s something almost intimate— almost  _ human _ — about it. The heat, the movement, the rigor. It strips what it touches down to the bone and then even takes that too. 

He knows it probably isn’t healthy, all this. Dave the psychiatrist’s voice still echoes through his head from time to time, its exact campy cadence feeding him the same few phrases.  _ You can let yourself feel, If you have something on your mind, it’s okay to say it. _ Sometimes, at the beginning of their sessions, he’d ask Theo to try and pinpoint which emotion he was feeling the most that day. Anger, sadness, fear. Anger, sadness, fear. But it was never that simple. And it’s still not that simple. He doesn’t know, he has no clue what this is, this whirlwind, this sandstorm of thought and memory and touch inside him. There is no putting a name to it. He doesn’t know why he feels this way. 

_ It’s not good to keep things bottled up inside. _ That was Dave’s brilliant, hundred-bucks-an-hour, advice. But when has Theo ever done what’s good for him? He stopped caring a long long time ago. There just aren’t any rules, not anymore. They ceased to exist the moment that bomb ate away what little sense there’d been in his world. 

Besides, there’s nothing wrong with a few weird dreams. He can’t help but invite them in. There’s an unignorable pull there, a certain allure to the idea of clean and complete destruction, to the elusive finality of it all. Maybe he wasn’t ever meant to escape it. 

  
  


* * *

Theo doesn’t know how he gathers the nerve to slide himself into the empty seat next to Saffi Capersen in English, but he does and that’s where he finds himself before the start of class on Monday, palms sweating and legs bouncing like he’s back in middle school again. It’s stupid but, he’s decided that he needs to do this. That he needs to at least try. 

Saffi notices him immediately, lake-blue eyes turning to his, bright and wide as moons. She looks him over and smiles. “You don’t usually sit here, do you?”

“Um, n-no.” He says, smooth as ice. “I, uh, just wanted to ask if you’ve started that paper yet? The one on Dickens?” 

She straightens a bit at that, slight hint of suspicion written in the wrinkle of her brow. “Yeah. Finished it, like, two days ago. Why?”

Theo’s brain blanks. He didn’t really think this one through. They’ve just finished reading  _ A Tale of Two Cities _ and he assumed the paper would be a good enough conversation starter, a way to snag her attention, maybe offer up his help even though he hasn’t even started it himself yet. But of course Saffi’s already finished it. She’s never not been at the top of their class. 

“Well, I—” He starts and stops, not exactly sure how to proceed. Saffi stares at him, expectant, and in shame he lowers his eyes to her hands. It’s a little unnerving how perfect they are. Small and fine-boned, the skin clean and unscarred, lily-white. He’s batshit for thinking this was ever going to work. 

It’s then that Boris finally walks in, nearly late from Civics. He spots Theo right away and Theo watches as his expression shifts from casual boredom to surprise before at last settling on eager interest, vicious grin already tugging at the corners of his lips. He takes a seat in the aisle directly across from them, gangly limbs stretched out way farther than need be. Theo feels the drive spark up in him again, all embarrassment and unease vanishing from him like smoke. 

“I was just curious about your topic,” He says, turning back to Saffi (turning away from Boris), “y’know, since you’re hands down the smartest one here. I’m willing to bet it’s something I never thought about or noticed before.” 

“Oh,” She says, bright blush already spreading across her cheeks, “I don’t know about  _ that _ , but you’re sweet for saying so.” Smiling earnestly at him now, “You’re not so bad yourself, actually. I’ve heard you talk in class—that thing you said about Sydney? Something about his ‘fated misery’ and ‘unfulfilled love’? I felt the exact same way. And you just described it so perfectly too— it was impressive, I’ll admit.”

_ It’s working. _ That’s the only coherent thought propelling him forward now. It’s working, and there just might be a chance she could like him too, and maybe he’s not a complete idiot for giving it a shot, for trying  _ something _ . He grins and they talk and he continues to lay it on thick, charm he didn’t even know he had rolling off of him in waves. Saffi’s gorgeous in a way that makes this easy. Everything anyone could want all packed into one tiny, fae-like, girl: brilliant and bubbly and even slightly airy in a way that almost (almost) reminds him of Pippa. So, there’s absolutely no reason why he shouldn’t be able to do this— why he shouldn’t be able to just ask a girl out, for fuck’s sake. And yet. 

Something smacks against the side of his head. He turns around, scowling, and finds just what he expected: Boris glaring at him challengingly, three more balls of paper already rolled up and ready on his desk. He has the nerve to raise his eyebrows as if he isn’t the obviously guilty one. Theo kicks him in the shin. 

Saffi clears her throat from behind them and puts a hand on Theo’s wrist. He jumps at the touch. 

“Um, I think you two should save that for later,” she says, nodding toward Spirsetskaya,  who’s just walked in. “But,” she looks at Theo, “maybe we could talk more— after class?” 

There’s warmth in her look and her voice and her hand, which is still very much against his skin. She likes him. Or, at least, she  _ could  _ like him. He smiles and nods and makes sure to angle himself in a way Boris will see him when he leans in and tells her that he’d _ love  _ to. 

The next 40 minutes are interminable. 

He spends the first half lost in a somewhat reverent daze, still riding the slight thrill of a conversation gone well. It keeps him distracted for a bit, the seemingly innumerable amount of possibilities flitting through his head like promises. He can see himself with Saffi. He can. He can see them holding hands and sucking face and going out to that Italian place he and Boris never got around to sneaking into. He can see her in his room, bent over his highlighted copy of  _ The Tempest _ .  He can see himself over at hers, seated at a dinner table, meeting her parents maybe. She’s the type to have the really kind, welcoming, attentive ones. She’s the type his own mother would have loved. 

But it dawns on him as he’s staring at the long length of hair falling down her back—the neat pleat of her miniskirt and the pretty swoop of her shoulders—that he is, as always, fooling himself. It’s easy to conjure the images up, storm of clichés and old movie tropes flooding into his thoughts at the ready, but none of it is real, he knows. And it’s like a door slamming shut inside him, this realization, sick as dread. It won’t work because he _doesn’t want it to_. He can see all that he wants, but he can’t feel it. He could dig and claw right down to the root and still not feel it because there’s nothing there. He has nothing for her. 

It’s terrifying, he thinks, how fast—how whiplash quick—you can build and destroy your own illusions. How jarringly simple it is to look at yourself and see right through. 

Right before class ends Boris leans over from his row, elbows Theo in the shoulder and gives him a thumbs up like he wasn’t just chucking paper a few minutes ago. Theo can hear everything he’s about to say before he can say it. All the smart-mouthed jeers and appraisals. The _Ha! I told you so_ and the inevitable _Didn’t I say you liked her? Didn’t I say_ _this is just what you needed?_

He doesn’t want to stay for any of it. Boris can laugh and joke and pretend all he wants, but in the end it’ll all still work out for him. He’ll still have his girl and he’ll still  _ want _ to have his girl. He won’t be alone, he probably won’t ever be alone, because he’s normal— normal in all the exact ways Theo is clearly not. And that’s the type of stuff that matters in the end, he knows. Whether or not you have someone; whether or not you’re good enough to make someone  _ stay _ . Boris will never have to worry about that— human vortex of a boy that he is; he will never be able to understand what it’s like to be made (doomed destined cursed) to never fit. Theo can’t find a fixed point, a new home, in just anyone, just anything. He doesn’t have that skill. He can’t move on. The two of them are irreconcilably different in that way. 

When the bell rings he’s the first one out the door. 

  
  


* * *

Theo shouldn’t have come to this party. 

It crosses his mind three drinks in. Two drinks in and four songs out. He’s just as miserable here as he was at home, holed up in his room with all the curtains drawn closed. Except at home he had stuff like his bed and a door that actually locked and here all he has is a Red Solo Cup that isn’t even red, but instead blue, and a headache the size of Texas blooming at the back of his skull. 

He swallows what’s left of his drink (a Rum and Coke that tastes like shit) and sets it down on the kitchen island amongst a bounty of other trash— food and napkins and lighters and what looks like a suspiciously stained pair of pants. He doesn’t even know whose house this is. He thought he did, but apparently he was mistaking one shaggy-haired blond kid for another, a Remy for a Ryan, and what does it even really matter when they’re all potheads anyway. Point is, he’s decided he definitely doesn’t want to be here, not when he’s got no one to hang with but himself and the nice buzz he had going earlier is starting to pitch dangerously into something deeper, something maybe a little bit too dark. 

It’s an explosion of laughter nearby that finally sends him staggering away from his hideout by the counter. The once-empty alcove of the kitchen is steadily beginning to fill with people just as drunk and stupid as he is right now, meaning it’s most defintely time to go. 

He makes his way from kitchen to living room to front hall sluggishly, ambling through dense crowds of people he registers but doesn’t feel, the murk around his brain far too viscous and blinding. He’d like this, normally. The way it kind of feels like he’s at sea when his eyes slip close, everything runny and buoyant around him, ethereal. But right now it’s just disorienting. He’s not home, but he should be. He’s alone but he shouldn’t be. What fun is any of this when there’s no one to laugh at it later with? It all just feels stupid. Complete mindless, numbing, bullshit. Doesn’t help that they’ve started to play Katy Perry on blast, or that somewhere along the way here he must’ve stepped in someone’s vomit (because he can see it, already drying to the toe of his shoe). The longer he stays here the worse it’ll get, he knows. He can feel his control fading away, an old and familiar anxiety tightening itself into a small fine knot at the center of his chest. 

He’s got a hand on the knob of the front door—almost out, almost gone, almost on his way home— when he hears someone call his name. It’s Saffi. He knows it before he turns around. Before she touches his shoulder and lets out a breath, warm and boozy, that’s maybe a little  _ too _ close to the skin of his neck. He spins on his heels and takes a step back, blearily taking in the sight of her. Bright, dimpled smile as always, glittery makeup dusted over her eyes and the slants of her cheeks. She looks him over and once again he is overcome with the strange, startling, feeling that she can see right through him, that maybe there’s something Telling about him written right across his face. What that is, not even he’s sure, but he knows he doesn’t like it.

They chatter confusedly for a bit, voices swamped by the music which has now risen loud enough that he can feel it pulsing through the back of his teeth. It’s clear from the way she’s standing—slight sway, hip cocked awkwardly to the side for balance—that she’s drunk too. Probably not as far gone as he is though. She’s too straight-laced for that. 

“This place is a shithole, huh?” She says, narrowly dodging a couple barreling their way toward the keg. “I didn’t even want to come, really. My friends dragged me here.” 

Theo nods dumbly. He’s trying his damn near hardest not to think about the thing hanging unspoken between them, blatant and clear as day. He never hit her up after class that day. Never bothered to try and catch her in the halls. He had, in fact, started to avoid her at all costs. It was pointless, cowardly even, but he couldn’t help it, just couldn’t shake it. He’d be lying if he said that there wasn’t some sort of vague, sickly sense of shame that’s attached itself to the image of her lately, tied—undoubtedly—to his pitiful failure in class. He doesn’t like to think about it. 

Saffi seems to notice that he’s zoning out like some sort of brain dead freak because she grabs him by the wrist and starts tugging him away from the door, right back into the throng of people he was trying to get away from. 

“Actually,” He starts, “I was about to head out. I don’t really—”

“Shhh,” She says. “One more drink won’t hurt you.” She turns back to look at him, “Would it?”

The answer is yes, it probably will, but it’s not like he’s about to tell a  _ girl _ that. He shakes his head and they keep on walking. 

“We can go outside, to the yard. They lit the fire pit. Heard some idiots talking about how they wanted to make it into a bonfire. If anything it’s more of an overgrown campfire.” She pulls him past the sliding doors. “It’s calmer out here anyway. Most people have left already.” 

  
  


The cool sting of night air is disorienting at first, a dizzying contrast to the flushed heat of an overpacked house. He steadies himself against the door frame and hopes to fuck he doesn’t look half as wasted as he feels. Saffi’s right though, it is (at least) quiet. There’s only two more people out here from what he can see. 

She slips a drink into his hand from a table spread nearby and they take a seat on the floor by the glow of the fire. Theo eyes the expensive collection of rustic stone bricks encircling it, trapping it in place. For a fleeting moment he imagines himself kicking it in somehow, letting all those flames crawl right out. They’d find the slick puddles of booze spotting the floor easily enough. This entire place could go up. Gone, just like that. 

“You don’t talk much,” Saffi says, picking at the label of her beer. 

He doesn’t know what to say to that. 

“I don’t mind it or anything. I’m just saying.” 

He clears his throat. “Where’d your friends go?” 

The moment he says it he feels stupid, and hopes she doesn’t take it in a rude way. His brain isn’t exactly in full communication with his mouth right now. 

But Saffi doesn’t seem bothered. “No idea. Probably necking some idiots in the bathroom. I need new ones.” She takes a sip. “Where’s  _ your _ friend?” 

“Who?” He says it like he doesn’t already feel a familiar and accursed heat flooding into his cheeks. Somehow, some way, everything always circles back to Him. He fists and unfists his hand. 

“Oh please,” She says, “you only have, like, one.” 

It should sting, but it surprisingly doesn’t. It’s just the truth. 

“That I know of, at least,” She quickly amends. 

“Probably necking  _ his _ idiot.” He shrugs, takes a sip from his cup. Another Rum and Coke. “He’s not at the party, if that’s what you mean.” 

She hums and turns her face up toward the sky. For a moment everything goes a little quiet and still, her looking up at the stars and him watching her do it. In the shadowy, flickering light she looks serene, unknowable. He wishes he could be like that too. 

“Time. That’s what I wrote my paper on, if you still wanted to know,” She says it without looking at him. “The way it sort of runs, like an undercurrent, throughout everything in the story. All that tension that builds from it running out. There’s so much foreboding, so many  _ warnings _ about what’s to come.” She raises her bottle to her lips, “A steady march toward the inevitable.” 

Theo nods. His mind feels sluggish, dumb, but he can still understand the core of what she’s talking about. The suffocating sense of something Wrong looming on the horizon was one of the first things he’d identified in the book, one of the first things that had struck him as achingly familiar. 

“I feel like that sometimes,” She says, her thoughts almost echoing his own, “like the world’s just one big hourglass. Like I'm just waiting for whatever’s going to happen. And it doesn’t always feel like it’s going to be good.” She squints at the shrouded desert hills far beyond the fence, “It’s scary, the not knowing.” She pauses, “It’s lonely.”

Theo edges closer to her, slips his hand in hers and squeezes, no space for thinking twice. Maybe he should be treating this all like it’s his God-given second chance or something, a way to prove to himself that he isn’t actually chickenshit, isn’t actually a completely hopeless cause, but he knows he’s far beyond that already. What he wants, Saffi doesn’t have. He knows and she knows. Even in his lazy and blurred state it’s clear. 

“I know exactly what you mean.” Dread’s trailed him his whole life. After his mom. Before his mom. Everyday in between and everyday since. It makes you sick, after a while—always expecting the anchor to drop, the floor to collapse, the person to vanish, the bomb to go off (as it always did, again and again and again). It’s rare to find anyone that understands, not when it’s a personalized monster that lives inside your own head. He wonders what it is for her. He wonders how it was that they even got to this conversation. 

They sit in a weighted silence for a bit, the night gradually growing colder around them. The moment only breaks once saffi pulls her hand away, but she does it with a smile. 

“Thank you. Really.” There’s something tentative in her voice, guarded and a little unsure. “I don’t know what all that was but just, thanks for listening.” She stands up and smooths out her skirt, straightens her breeze-blown hair. He can see the sobriety springing back in her eyes. “I should probably get going, it’s late.” 

“Okay,” He says, when really he should be thanking her back. If she hadn’t stopped him, distracted him, he probably would have gone home and taken one too many painkillers. Simple as that. 

“Y’know,” She starts, “my friends are kind of shitty. They change their allegiances almost every other day.” She levels him with a meaningful look, “But I don’t think yours is. Girlfriend or not, I don’t think he’d want you sulking around a party alone.” 

He bites back a laugh at that, tries his best not to overthink what it means. 

“I mean it,” She says, kicking the side of his leg playfully, “if you’ve got someone that cares, let them.” 

He raises his drink to hers in way of a goodbye and she raises hers back before disappearing past the sliding doors. He sits there for a while after, left once again to the stars and flames. 

  
  


* * *

“It’s not that difficult.” Theo’s dad is leaning forward, elbows on the table, eyes glazed but hard.“You don’t let the obstacles own you. You don’t let them get in the way of what’s meant to be.” 

He’s talking about himself, of course. The roughened road to his success, his transient ‘ _ fame _ ’. Theo picks up the fork in front of him, examines its spotless surface for stains just so that his hands have something to do. “Meant to be, huh?”

A waitress who’s probably not much older than Theo himself sidles up to their table, arms full of precariously balanced plates. She sets down their food and his dad dismisses her with the slightly aggravated wave of a hand, an unsettlingly familiar gesture that brings with it a flash of memory; tension-fraught dinners back in the old apartment, when his mother was still alive—the food always being served timidly, apologetically. Like it was a bad thing to be seen or heard. 

“Yes. Meant to be.” His dad continues, “We all have something we were put here to do. Whether or not we’re aware of what it is doesn’t matter. The point is, nothing can get in the way of things taking their natural course, which is why you have to trust your gut. Instinct is everything. Instinct is how I got out of the fuckin’ boonies and onto the streets of New York. Do you think my parents wanted me to study drama? Hell no. But do you think that made a difference? It happened anyway, because it was  _ supposed  _ to. If something’s in your cards, it’ll work itself out. So long as you let it.” 

“Sure,” Theo says, because he isn’t really sure how else to reply to all that. It’s nothing new. A favored topic of conversation for his dad during their dine-outs, actually. Destiny and predetermination, everyone’s entire futures written out in the stars. He doesn’t know why it feels a little bit different today though. Like he’s being lectured. Honed in on, specifically. There’s a dodgy urgency to his dad’s tone, something of an entreaty in the way he keeps trying to meet Theo’s eyes. It makes him uncomfortable.

“But, you know,” his dad says, setting in on his food now, “you also can’t forget about risk. The risks are everything.” He stops, chews slowly for a bit. “We can get all the stuff that’s meant for us, but we have to be willing to take big steps. Do things we wouldn’t normally do. Scary things, sometimes.” 

Theo stares fixedly at his plate. His dad ordered them both the same meal. Steak and baked potato. Thin rivulets of butter drooling all down the sides. He was starving earlier but can feel his appetite start to slip away from him now. It’s been doing that a lot lately.

“Some really good changes are going to come our way,” he goes on, “really good. So don’t worry about anything. All right? 

“I’m not—”

“Yeah, you’re okay. I know. You’re a good kid.” He reaches out to touch Theo on the shoulder but Theo shrinks back. He doesn’t mean to do it. But at the same time, he kind of does. The strained smile on his dad’s face flattens into a small frown. Gone as soon it came. 

“Uh, you’re sure everything’s fine?” Theo says, gathering his voice as best he can, “I mean, it’s great, what you said about the changes, but—”  _ But what do you mean by risks? What are you talking about? Why are you telling me this? _

“Didn’t I just say it was?” His dad leans back, arms crossed now. Theo can feel whatever brief window of communication there may have been between them shutter close, fast and final. “Look,” rubbing his face, “this is how I make a living. I’ve got faith in the choices I make. Even the  _ less conventional _ ones. You should too.”

Theo nods and sips his club soda and doesn’t say a word. He has no idea what any of this means, why his dad is acting like he  _ does _ know, why he’s acting like it’s something he would’ve been worried about. Probably he’s riding out the tailend of some sort of high, Theo thinks. The residual off-kiltered haze of a Vicodin tablet, maybe. He’s loose and rambly and coolly self-assured in all the ways he normally is after knocking those back. Theo knows the routine well enough. 

Still.

He can’t completely shake the feeling that something is wrong. Or, soon to be wrong. They eat and Theo keeps a steady, but guarded, eye on him, childishly weary for no good reason. There’s a swarm of old anxieties brushing up against the walls of his mind. Fragmented bits and pieces of conversations he didn’t even know he remembered. His dad, arched over their landline phone back in the city; harried whispers and urgent talk about dues and fees, things meant to be kept secret, things Theo knew (even then) couldn’t be good. Jose pulling him aside, strange look in his eyes.  _ There’ve been some guys coming around lately, asking after your dad.  _

He has to fight down the sickly feeling that that’s what this is about. The thought that his dad— apparently as heedless as ever—would drag with him to Vegas his knack for financial fuck-up and ruin is enough to already send his pulse racing. Risks and bets and losses and threats. He runs through all the Russian swear words he knows, again and again in his head, just to keep his mouth shut and his mind occupied. He’s always been too quick to jump to conclusions. 

The rest of the dinner goes by without much affair. Aside from the occasional curveball on his dad’s part, Theo’s surprised to find that he’s actually gotten somewhat better at this: at sitting down and talking with his dad, at just being _ near  _ him. He’d been afraid in the past (genuinely  _ afraid _ ) at just the thought of them being left alone together—of the type of pin-sharp ‘I don’t really know you’ silence that would cut between them both, split open a rift deep and daunting as a cliff edge, uncrossable. But though it’s like that some of the time, he also can’t deny that there are a few moments now, recent ones, that aren’t as bad, that are almost kind of good in some ways. Brief interludes— in the car, on the weekends, sometimes at a dinner like this—in which his dad has something to say, something real and for once unrelated to sports or work or fate. Something Theo can actually respond to. 

It’s like that while they wait for the check. His dad asks him about school, about the last movie he caught on tv and what he thinks of the upcoming election. They talk and it’s fine for a bit, it really is. Fine and easy enough that Theo can eventually feel his guard begin to slip, the tense weight of their earlier conversation already fading into memory. It’s exhausting sometimes, holding onto the worry. All those thoughts and anxieties that shift in him like shrapnel, day in and day out. A low and steady ache. So what if he realizes he’s a little eager at the idea of actually being able to talk about things? Part of him almost relishes in imagining—just for a second, as they’re walking side by side to the parked car—that he could open up about everything. Just lay it all bare for once. No lies, no hiding, no skating around what he actually means. He thinks about the painting, sitting at home, bundled in its tomb of tape. Thinks about what it’d be like to tear it open, free the bird inside and show him to his dad.  _ Look. I did this. I took it. It was me.  _ His dad wouldn’t even know what he meant, Theo’s sure. Or, maybe he would. Either way, what matters is that it would actually feel like something: shedding that truth. Something more than the blinding monotony of avoidance and hiding. 

It’s a fantasy. He knows. He would never in a million years even dream of doing something as stupid as that. It’s just kind of nice to pretend, is all. They get to the car and he climbs into the passenger seat he only ever gets to ride in on days like these and it’s nice to pretend that his dad is someone he’s not. Someone who gambled a little less and was around a little more and cared just the right amount to want to know about all the things that go on in Theo’s head, the secrets and the fears and the memories and the nightmares and whatever the hell else it is that usually interests all the normal parents out there. 

The Strip is a blur of color as they pull away. Flickering streamline of hotels and restaurants, casinos and shopping malls all dizzyingly unalike. Transience solidified. By the time they’re spat back out into the emptied flatland of the desert, Theo’s made up his mind to try and set some of his grudges aside. It could be worth it. It could be the first step to something real, something stable, maybe. His mom always used to say that trust wasn’t a one-way street. Granted, she was never talking about his dad, but still. He can’t ignore the small remaining piece of him that still wants to try. 

* * *

  
  


Theo’s heating up leftover pizza one night when someone bangs on the front door, impatient and rapidfire fast in a way that makes it obvious enough who’s on the other side. 

Boris breezes in before he can weasel out so much as a “Hey”, gusts of night air rushing in with him and clinging to his rumpled clothes, his tousled hair. Theo shuts the door behind him and folds his arms across his chest, trying his best to look indifferent, disinterested. 

“And where the hell have you been lately?”

Boris doesn’t reply. He’s made his way into the kitchen and is rifling through the fridge distractedly, tension written all over his bunched up shoulders and tightly wound jaw. Theo watches his back intently as he moves, still dazed at the fact that he’s here. It hasn’t even been too long, a week since he’s been over at most, but yet Theo still feels the need to stare— to memorize the image of him here, in the kitchen, in the house,  _ homehomehome. _ It’s pathetic, but he can’t help it. How else is he supposed to feel when the one person he talks to no longer wants to hang out with him outside of school? He’s gone through this before, and a part of him is venomously bitter that he’s let himself go through it again. This is how it’ll always be, he thinks, all this coming and going and him waiting, always ready, always here. It’s unnerving how well he can see it, all the months ahead unfurling themselves in this one moment, this one thing. 

After a minute or so of digging, Boris tears himself away from the fridge and lunges for the sink, raggedly emptying out the contents of his stomach into the drain. Theo wrinkles his nose and snaps out of the trance he’d lost himself in.

“Are you smashed? Is that it?”

Boris barks out a laugh and spits into the basin. His hands are shaky and white against the countertop. Unhinged. That’s what he is. Theo knows that frantic, keyed up look he gets all too well. Something is wrong. He moves closer to examine him and that’s when he sees it: bruises, fresh and infuriatingly red, all over his neck, crisscrossing the hollows of his throat. Bruises in the shape of fingerprints. Theo feels his stomach twist. 

“He—?” The words are heavy and molten, too heated and furious to make it past his mouth. 

Boris nods. “Was thinking, maybe I can stay here tonight?” Running a hand over his face, “I wouldn’t bother you, but Kotku and I, we, we’re not— and my Dad, he is under a lot of stress. Work is not very good right now.” He pauses, eyes darting almost frantically about the room. Anywhere but Theo. “Probably I should stay away. For a bit.” 

Theo is still staring at his neck. Still working his mind around the ghastly sight of it. The glaringly ugly violence of it all. He swallows thickly, scrambling to string together something coherent.

“You and Kotku?”

Nice.

Boris waves a hand dismissively. “Is nothing. She’s gotten herself into problems with boyfriend. Not my fault and yet still she is on me, nagging about everything I do. ‘Oh Boris, get your boots off the bed.’ ‘Oh Boris, you should have bought the weed like I told you too.’ ‘Oh Boris, you have not—” 

“Okay, okay, I get it already, damn.” 

He rolls his eyes and starts pacing. “That is how I feel. Sometimes is like she is my wife, but sometimes is also like I am her pet.” He sneers. 

He’s rambling, and dramatically at that. Theo puts a hand on his shoulder, stops him in place. He can feel how fast his breath is moving beneath the worn cotton of his shirt. 

“You can stay here. No one's home anyway.” 

Boris sighs and slumps his way over to the couch, two fingers pressed firmly to the bridge of his nose. “Is there,” he looks back at the fridge door, still hanging open, “something to drink?” 

Theo knows he doesn’t mean water. He grabs two beers for them despite the fact that he could smell the alcohol rolling off of Boris the moment he stepped through the door. Excluding the brash entrance, and the fact that he’s been ignored for the better part of five days, Theo  _ is _ still glad that Boris is here now, with him. Especially given the circumstances. He takes a breath and settles down next to him, their knees knocking together in a familiar way. 

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” He didn’t want to ask, but it’s more than alarming to think that he could be hiding something worse, brushing it off as nothing as he does with just about everything else. 

“Only in my heart,” Boris says, and then lets out another laugh that sounds like it’s toeing the edge of hysteria. Theo gives him a look and Boris kicks at his leg playfully.

“Relax,” he says. “Kotku is more of a pain to me than anything my father can do.” 

“Right.”

“Pah, you worry too much. Let us watch the TV. Eat, drink, be merry, no? Now, where is my  _ poustyshka _ ?” 

Theo wants to push it, but decides to leave it be. He knows prying will only make him hostile, angry. It’s the last thing anyone needs right now. 

They kill a good 3 hours in front of the TV, emptying bottles and flipping through channels lazily, drunkenly, Popchyk snoozing duitfully at their feet. Theo shares his slice of pizza and as they pass it back and forth, laughing stupidly through over-stuffed mouths, he can’t help but marvel at the unspoken talent that exists between them. That convenient ability to sidestep disaster and turn the other way; pretend nothing ever happened, pretend everything is fine. All it takes is a couple of drinks and each other, really. Nothing can hurt them if they never look at it directly. 

The night chugs on and Boris downs more drinks than he does. By one in the morning Theo can feel the gauzy haze that had settled over him begin to slip away. He’s still drunk, but it's not the fun kind anymore. He can feel the sadness beginning to slip its way back in, coloring his thoughts a deep, bleak grey. An old rerun of  _ Looney Tunes _ shouts at him from the TV. He shifts in his seat restlessly. 

“Do you wanna do something else?”

He doesn’t think he can sit here much longer. It’s depressing, and they haven’t even said much to each other in the last hour anyway. The silence is making him anxious. 

Boris, however, is glued to the screen. Theo can tell he’s not actually paying attention though, from the look on his face and the death grip on his bottle, he’s definitely thinking about something else entirely. Theo shoves his shoulder and he sways slightly before refocusing his gaze. 

“Am tired,” he mumbles, swiping at his eyes. 

“Yeah, because you’re beyond gone.”   
  


“I might puke.”

“Not in here you won’t.”

Theo works the bottle out of his hand and hauls him off the cushions, lightly. If they don’t move their legs they’ll be plastered to the couch for the rest of the night, brains rolling out of their ears and one wicked hangover gearing up to attack them come morning. And while passing out may have been enough for him any other day, tonight he feels a somewhat desperate urge to stay awake, to stretch this day (these moments) out for as long as they can go. He doesn’t think he’s ready for it to be morning. He doesn’t think he’s ready to face another day. 

He drags a reluctant Boris upstairs with no concrete plan in mind. Maybe they can smoke a bit and read or something. Maybe they can just talk the night away. He’s fine with anything really, so long as it keeps the dark thoughts at bay. 

But Boris is already having dark thoughts of his own, he realizes, once they’re spread out on the dull blue carpet of his room, too uncoordinated to even make it onto the bed. He can hear it in the silence, in the way Boris keeps trying to train his unfocused eyes on something far off in the distance, something that isn’t there. Maybe tonight isn’t actually one of those nights when they can sidestep anything. Sometimes the bad stuff just keeps finding a way to shove itself in. 

Theo lights a cigarette and passes it to him. “Tell me something,” he says, almost cringing at how desperate and needy his own voice sounds. He feels like he’s groping for a light switch in a rapidly dimming room. “Please.”

Boris blinks lazily at him, cheeks a bright, bright crimson. “What is the matter?”

Theo looks away.  _ I want to know you’re okay _ , he wants so badly to say.  _ Everything feels wrong lately. Off. I need to know that you’re okay. That we’re okay. I need something to hold on to.  _ But none of this makes it past his lips. There’s no putting any real words to what it is that he’s feeling, what it is that he’s afraid of. All he knows is that time no longer feels stable, set. He feels like he’s running out of it. Like his every heartbeat might be driving him closer to something terrible. 

So he doesn’t say anything. He pulls the cigarette out from between Boris’s lips and sticks it between his own. Boris inches closer to him, the knobs of their wrists touching lightly. 

“I want to go to New York sometime,” he says, his voice no more than a whisper in the dark. “Will you show me around?”

There’s an unspoken statement in that. An assumption. Something Boris won’t say out loud. _You’ll go with me._ _We’ll be together._ Theo swallows thickly. He suddenly feels like crying. 

“Of course.”

“We will run away then, yes?” He puts his hand over Theo’s, skin cold, pulse point jumping. “So far away from here. And nothing will be the same again.” 

They’ve done this a lot. Laid about this room and planned their own disappearances. A hundred different places in mind, but the city almost always at the center of it all. And fuck if Theo doesn’t love that dream. He’s kept it tucked, safe and deep, in his mind for almost two years now. Has visited it again and again in some of his worst moments, holding it close almost as much as he does the painting. Both were treasured sources of light, but in completely different ways. 

He wants and he wants and he wants. 

“I miss us,” he says. The words had just tumbled straight out of his mouth, unbidden. He can’t even care to regret them though. It’s late, it’s dark, they’re close. Everything is always easier like this. 

Boris takes the cigarette from him and puts it out, only half-smoked. “We’re here,” he says, turning to face Theo fully, drunken head dipping dangerously close to Theo’s own. “We are right here.” 

And with that he lets himself fall, folding himself into Theo exhaustedly, cheek pressed against the cage of his ribs, arm curled firmly around his stomach. It’s always Boris that pulls them together first, doing something for them both that Theo could never, high or drunk or stone cold sober. And it freezes him in place every time, this tenuous and terrifying thing. He hardly dares to even breathe.

_ Don’t leave me again _ . He swears he doesn’t say it, not actually at least. He mouths the words silently into the night air, face far from Boris’s line of sight. No more than a thought, a humiliating wish. And yet it’s like Boris can hear him. He stirs against Theo’s chest, nose nestling right above Theo’s heart. “You worry too much, Potter.”

Theo’s world tilts, threatens to slip right off its axis. He keeps his eyes trained on a tiny crack sprouting from the corner of his ceiling. It will never not scare him, this shared frequency they rest on. The way they can talk without speaking, impart the most dangerous and important things with just a look, a touch. What does it mean to know someone like that? What does it cost? 

“I feel like I'm holding a billion things in my head,” he says. The weight of the last few months is swirling through him dizzyingly. The anger, the hate, the fear, the despair, the hope that rose and fell— the staggering emptiness thereafter. He’s heavy with it. And what’s worse is that he knows it will never be fully expressed, just another thing hidden down deep within him, another ghost taking up residence at the back of his head. 

Boris says nothing, a mute and motionless heap resting on top of him. Theo jostles him but receives no response. He’s out cold. 

There’s a part of him that exhales a bit at this, every muscle in his body untensing and sinking its way into the floor. There’s nothing to hide from now. No one to judge him. Not a single lasting consequence to anything he does. It’s only like this that he can ever let himself go, allow himself to fully feel what this is: this closeness, this rare and unfettered sense of warmth. Boris’s breaths huff slow and deep across his chest and the world seems to soften immeasurably around them. He slips a tentative hand through the tangle of his hair before ultimately deciding to keep it there, thumb trailing lightly along the shell of his ear. 

There’s no denying this.

The moon is full and bright outside his window, a relentless spotlight that falls impassively over them both. Theo allows himself to imagine a Forever that is composed of nothing but this. How easy it would be, a world stripped of everything but the two of them and this room. A world that would stare on at him unblinkingly, allow him to keep and hold and protect what he cares about most without reaching out a hand to snatch it all back (because he doesn’t deserve good things, because he wasn’t meant for them). 

Boris stirs against him sleepily, his arm around Theo still steadfast and sure. It’s honestly something to marvel at, Theo thinks. The unguarded trust and familiarity, the open and confident honesty of it all. For a brief moment he is really and truly unafraid. 

Everything ends, eventually. Theo knows this. Knows it far more than most. His everyday is tainted with it. The night will end, they will end, he—eventually—will end. That’s just how it all works, dreams or wishes aside. So, this is what he has for now. His back aching against the flattened carpet, the room a mess of busted books and dirty clothes, Boris wrapped around him like an endless spool of thread, impossibly fastening them both to the temporal here and now.

There are a billion things in Theo’s head. 

  
  


His hand finds the slope of Boris’s back and with his eyes closed he begins to trace out the one thing he would never actually tell him, over and over again, so light he’s sure it can barely be felt. If this is all he has then he will cling to it in the only way that he can— for as long as he can. 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr: @borispav


End file.
